Possible good news on energy and renewable energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 5-26-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.

And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.

Today’s post:

Last Sunday, 5-23-2010, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story with some extremely good news about energy and renewable energy.

It was titled, “Solar can lead us away from environmental catastrophes.”

Tony Seba, an author who wrote a book titled, “Solar Trillions—7 Market and Investment Opportunities in the Emerging Clean-Energy Economy” wrote it.

He points out that accidents like the recent massive oil spill in the Gulf tend to happen from time to time despite supposedly having preventive measures in place. And, he notes this could easily happen with increasing nuclear power as well as with offshore drilling.

He then goes on to say that going to all electric cars and can sharply reduce the need for oil from environmentally risky sources while getting electricity from solar can similarly sharply the need for more nuclear power where accidents could also be catastrophic.

(I’m a bit less bearish on offshore drilling and a lot less bearish about nuclear power. The good news is that they CAN be done safely. The bad news is that paying up for that safety and paying for the safety measures to be reliably maintained makes them much less affordable; & ONLY IF that’s done, should they be allowed at all.)

He points out that electric cars cost five times less to maintain than cars that burn oil. So, if their batteries can hold enough electricity and the car and the batteries cost the same or less as cars burning gasoline, electrics will take over the market. He says they will cost the same by 2020 and enough less to make gasoline powered cars obsolete by 2030.

Since advances in battery technology already in the works and economies of scale as more electric cars are sold are occurring , he may be correct.

He then says that he expects the cost of solar generated electricity to drop “80 to 90 percent in the next decade. This means that by 2020, unsubsidized solar power will be cheaper than subsidized coal, oil and nuclear.”

He gives some evidence in each of these two areas, electric cars and solar, that suggest these events are actually happening.

And, he notes that a large solar thermal plant being built by BrightSource Energy here in California “will generate more solar power than all the photovoltaic panels installed in North America last year.”

In reading his article, I found it very nice indeed to read good news for once.

There is some evidence he could be correct. He lists some of it in his article and may list a good bit more in his book.

Here are some other reasons he might be correct that were not in his article.

Between the rest of Southern California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and part of West Texas, we could easily build another 20 or 30 large solar thermal plants.

And, though it’s not often in the press yet, we could easily build another 100 to 150 large solar thermal plants in Mexico. It turns out that Mexico has about five times the potential for solar thermal that the Southwestern United States does. (Doing that could create so many jobs in Mexico, it would solve 90% of the immigration problem from just this one thing.)

The solar thermal company with the best technology that is most modular and easy to deploy quickly was called Ausra. Now the French energy company, AREVA has bought Ausra and renamed it AREVA Solar. They plan to use their deep pockets to sharply increase the number of solar thermal plants around the world. And, I think they will.

Last year, California, there was a banner year for installing solar photovoltaic power. Because of its relatively low cost incentive system, Germany with far less incoming solar than California installed over NINE times as much solar last year. Soon, California may have a comparable incentive system.

So, as all these trends go forward at the same time, electric cars and both kinds of solar energy will begin to cost less than gasoline cars and more polluting forms of energy do today.

When that much money is to be made, the transition after that will happen MUCH faster.

Nor is that all. The Kuwaiti’s recently predicted peak oil for 2014 – just 4 years from now. So oil will soon cost far more than it does now and supplies may drop. In addition to that, at some point there will be some tax or financial penalty attached to releasing CO2 and more effort made to ask coal and oil producers to pay the full costs of their fuels by requiring their work to be safer, less polluting, and have less environmental impact.

So, not only will electric cars cost less to buy and operate and solar electricity will cost far less, gasoline and electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear will cost more than they do now.